IRS Hearing: McDermott, Ryan, and Schock Rumble (Video)

Democrat Congressman Jim McDermott took the floor at today’s Ways and Means hearing and blamed the conservative groups that were improperly targeted by the IRS. According to McDermott, if they didn’t apply for tax-exempt status, they would have never been scrutinized.

After the horror stories that have come out, Congress’s biggest hack. Jim McDermott suggests that the conservative groups brought their problems with the IRS on themselves.

At The Conversation, Joel Pollak commented, “if the IRS scandal lacked a bully figure, it has one now.”

McDermott repeated the same attacks on 501(c)4 organizations that other Democrats have recycled in their talking points since the scandal began. But he made the mistake of attacking the witnesses–and misrepresenting the testimony of at least one in particular. All of them, he said, were before Congress because they had been seeking tax subsidies; but as Dr. John Eastman of the National Organization for Marriage–already a tax-exempt organization–had just testified, his specific complaint was about the apparently criminal leak of their donors’ names to a liberal organization.

Paul Ryan inspired applause from spectators in the hearing room when deviated from his original question to respond to McDermott’s absurdities.

Whether they acted on bad advice or out of frustration, Democrats missed badly with their attacks on the witnesses. They came across as bullies–with the exception, perhaps, of Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), who once falsely accused the Tea Party of racism but undoubtedly knows about the importance of 501(c)4 status in the history of the civil rights struggle. Worse, Democrats saw their cherished Citizens United defense crushed.

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The coup de grâce came during questioning by Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL), who pointed out the elephant in the room: President Barack Obama’s own Organizing for Action, a 501(c)4 group specifically devoted to the defense of the president’s policies. Rep. McDermott interrupted to state that Organizing for Action should also disclose its donors as well. Yet clearly that is not on the agenda for Democrats or the White House.